Hi and thanks for visiting the best Ravens forum on the planet. You do not have to be a member to browse the various forums, but in order to post and interact with your purple brethren, you will have to **register**. It only takes a couple of minutes. You can also use your Facebook account to log in....just click on the blue 'FConnect' link at the very top of the page.

Re: Anyone remember the 1977 season?

Originally Posted by Ravenboy2003

Pre-internet and pre-ESPN/NFLN.. you had to rely on your scratchy AM radio and Chuck Thompson to have any clue what was going on at Memorial Stadium.

Or go the the games. Tickets were plentiful. IIRC, we had only 4 sellouts per season during the height of Bert Jones era success with three straight division titles. We had upper deck 40 yard line seats for $10/game, but even then we had to buy exhibition tickets. I groused at the true cost being $12/game! (CPI has't come close to rate of increase for comparable Ravens season tix).

In a 2003 BBC poll that asked Brits to name the "Greatest American Ever", Mr. T came in fourth, behind ML King (3rd), Abe Lincoln (2nd) and Homer Simpson (1st).

Re: Anyone remember the 1977 season?

Originally Posted by Mista T

Or go the the games. Tickets were plentiful. IIRC, we had only 4 sellouts per season during the height of Bert Jones era success with three straight division titles. We had upper deck 40 yard line seats for $10/game, but even then we had to buy exhibition tickets. I groused at the true cost being $12/game! (CPI has't come close to rate of increase for comparable Ravens season tix).

Oh we went to a lot of games.. Dad's best friend owned a restaurant in Elkton and had 4 season tickets in Lower 34. I think the face value of those was $18.

I remember the '82 strike year when the season finally resumed, I think the last game of the season was on New Years Day against the Dolphins. MAYBE 10,000 showed up for that one. You could hear conversations people were having 3 sections over. That and most of the people in the stands spent the whole day getting drunk and screaming obscenities at Frank Kush.

Re: Anyone remember the 1977 season?

Originally Posted by Mista T

Or go the the games. Tickets were plentiful. IIRC, we had only 4 sellouts per season during the height of Bert Jones era success with three straight division titles. We had upper deck 40 yard line seats for $10/game, but even then we had to buy exhibition tickets. I groused at the true cost being $12/game! (CPI has't come close to rate of increase for comparable Ravens season tix).

Fans were sick and tired of Irsay's actions and the product on the field started really going down when Bert Jones had permanent damage to his throwing shoulder. OH what if Bert Jones hadn't been injured in a preseason ( I think) game against Detroit.

Re: Anyone remember the 1977 season?

Originally Posted by Mista T

Or go the the games. Tickets were plentiful. IIRC, we had only 4 sellouts per season during the height of Bert Jones era success with three straight division titles. We had upper deck 40 yard line seats for $10/game, but even then we had to buy exhibition tickets. I groused at the true cost being $12/game! (CPI has't come close to rate of increase for comparable Ravens season tix).

Yea, that's right.

As I recall our last season ticket package was like
$140. Today guys are paying more than their mortgages for PSLs-lol.

You could get a coke and hot dog for 25 cents.
What's a beer today - $8 lol.d

Joe Thomas screwed the fans by adding the pre-season tickets to the regular season ticket packages. In the past most Colts fans never went to pre-season games. Seems we were the only fans in the country that knew the games were phony-lol.

So Thomas made them mandatory and a lot of old fans dropped their tickets including original season ticket holders.

In order to bring the team back, Bert Bell the Comish demanded something like 15,000 pre-sold season tickets. We had a team and they moved and were trying to get them back.

The city sold those tickets fast and we got the
old Dallas Texans. Bell then appointed Carroll Rosenbloom as the owner. He only had to put up a few thousand of his own money or something like that. He set $1M cash aside and said he would sell out when the money ran out. It never ran out. Years later he said I made more money in pro football than anywhere else.

When he sold the Colts to Irsay for $19M, Irsay quoted him as saying the team would be worth
$100,000 in a decade. Today the Colts are worth
$1B. It's Jimmy's only job, the only one he ever had.

I knew games were fixed during the 58 Championship game in sudden death. Unitas was driving for the game winning TD and was in field goal range to win it but Rosey was on the sideline
demanding that he go for the TD.

You see, Rosey gambled a lot on that game and he needed the TD to cover the point spread and he got it and the players got extra cash in envelopes under their doors. That's in Steadman's book.

When Rosey died swimming off his Florida beach front estate, Arty Donovan called Unitas and said mafia frogmen just killed Rosey.

Rosey owed Vegas millions. There was foul play called and even his wife Georgia was a suspect or questioned. No evidence of foul play was found and Georgia re-married before his body was cold.

She died not too long ago and her children recently sold the team. Remember when Rush Limbaugh tried to buy it and the players revolted-lol.

Re: Anyone remember the 1977 season?

Originally Posted by AirFlacco

Somebody said they were too old for this forum, I'm the oldest and been going to Colts games since the 50s as a little tot. I remember the Packers coming in before Lombardi. I remember talking to my friends in the back yard saying we never win anything in Bmore. That was in 58 when Bmore won their first championship ever.
I didn't understand the Xs and Os but knew the main objectives of the game.

As far as goal posts, a neighbor had one sticking up in his back yard in Govans. That was in 1960 during a game with the Lions.

Colts were going for their 3rd straight championhip but played a game in Chicago. We won but they beat us up so bad they knocked us out of the PO pic, just like Ravens did to Pissburgh just now. They won but haven't won a game since after Ravens beat them up-lol.

Anyway, Colts just had to win 1 of 4 games in 1960. The last game was vs Lions and a journeyman QB named Earl Morrall, later of SB 3 and SB 5 fame with the Colts.

Unitas brought the team back with an incredible last min patented TD and the place went nuts. Everyone stormed on the field and it took about 30 mins for the cops to clear the field. Can you see that happening today-lol.

There was enough time for the kickoff and 1 play.
Morrall got the ball and threw a short pass and the receiver ran 80 yds for the TD and win and that was the beginning of a bad decade for the Colts culminating with SB 3 with 1965 in between and Matte as the instant QB. We finished tied with GB with a 10-1-1 record with Matte as the QB. There was a game in GB won by them on a phony FG. Even their kicked kicked the dirt knowing he missed. Then he heard the crowds yelling and saw the refs calling it good.

The Colts protested the kick but to no avail of course. John Steadman had a pic of the kick and was going to publish it in the old News American. The Commish, Pete Rozelle asked him not to. Thirty years later he put the pic in his book FROM COLTS TO RAVENS and there it was a good 10 ft wide but Refs called it good.

Back to the Morrall TD, there were still fans on top of the goal posts pulling them down and there were still fans on the field.

I as one of them with my dad and uncles and one of those posts ended up down the alley-lol.

Yep, dont bring up that play. That haunts my family for years the Morrall play.

Re: Anyone remember the 1977 season?

And speaking of gambling, Rosey also bet on SB 3 which many of us still think was fixed. However, his bookie in Miami said that he bet on the Colts. He never bet vs them so if the fix was on Rosey didn't know about it.

However, one of his favorite sons and MLB Bill Pellington of the old Colts did bet vs them. According to bar talk from Pellingtons Iron Horse in Cockeysville all the way down to Greenmount Ave Pellington bet 30,000 on the Jets.

He must have known something. He was also from New York and was a bouncer in his dad's bar when he was a kid.

He got the name The Iron Horse for playing with a broken arm. He loved the cast on it.
Can you see today's players playing with a broken arm?

So he stood there at MLB and whacked the RBs with his cast as they came thru and got the nick name The Iron Horse and later opened a restaurant of the same name. He died a few years ago.

However, he liked the cast so much he played with it the following year. The opposing coach protested. The ref said he has a broken arm.

Re: Anyone remember the 1977 season?

Originally Posted by AirFlacco

And speaking of gambling, Rosey also bet on SB 3 which many of us still think was fixed. However, his bookie recently said that he bet on the Colts. He never bet vs them so if the fix was on Rosey didn't know about.

However, one of his favorite sons and MLB Bill Pellington of the old Colts did bet vs them. According to bar talk from Pellingtons Iron Horse in Cockeysvill all the way down to Greenmount Ave Pellington bet 30,000 on the Jets.

He must have known something.

I believed SBIII it was fixed too, but as mentioned in a previous post here, I started believing the NFL was fixed after the 1965 game in GB. And still is!
My family used to laugh at me whenever I said NFL was fixed and then when the Baltimore got football back, some of the strangest penalties were being called
in close games in 96 & 97 that other believers joined with me. Those were the days when the Ravens with Vinny could score but also couldn't keep the opponent from scoring!

Re: Anyone remember the 1977 season?

Does anyone know how Shula even became a head coach. Rosey went to his favorite son
Gino Marchetti and said I'm firing Weeb. Do you have any suggestions.

Gino said yea, Don Shula. Rosey said wasnt he that DB we had back in 54. Gino said yea. The Lions beat us twice this year and Shula's prints were all over it.

So Rosey called Shula and offered him the job and said you've been recommended. Shula didn't know by whom until he got here and made Gino a player coach.

Gino got into football when he came home from the war. He was in the Battle of the Bulge. He was sitting on the sofa when a college coach came to pick up his brother after giving him a scolarship to U of SF.

When they were leaving he saw Gino's massive body and said would you like to play football? Gino said hell yea and he took them both. Gino became the best player to ever play at the school and is in the HOF but he sure looks like a midget next to Goose and Ngata-lol.

Re: Anyone remember the 1977 season?

In my youth, I went to 7 or 8 Colts games from 80-83.... Every game I went to they frickin loss except for last one... The Houston Oiler game. Little did I know then, it would be the last Colt game for everyone.

The only time in my Colts experience that they actually had a glimmer of hope was in 83 when they were 6-4. My dad scored some tickets to the Steelers game at home so it was the only time I was truly excited for a possible playoff season. Of course, Cliff Stoudt & the Steelers broke my heart (hated the Squealers back then too) and the rest of the season went into the tank.

Whenever I start getting pissed off that the Ravens are struggling at 9-5, I take a timeout, and remember how hopeless the Colts were in my youth. We should all thank our lucky stars that #1 WE AMAZINGLY HAVE A TEAM which is miracle, and #2 THEY WIN A LOT. It just really pisses me off when Ravens fans get so angry when everything doesnt go to their likening during a game, even when the team F----ING WINS THE GAME. Sure the Ravens have a lot of issues, but for Christ Sake, enjoy it a little that we have a Baltimore football team, and they win a lot.

Re: Anyone remember the 1977 season?

Originally Posted by ravensnhokies

In my youth, I went to 7 or 8 Colts games from 80-83.... Every game I went to they frickin loss except for last one... The Houston Oiler game. Little did I know then, it would be the last Colt game for everyone.

The only time in my Colts experience that they actually had a glimmer of hope was in 83 when they were 6-4. My dad scored some tickets to the Steelers game at home so it was the only time I was truly excited for a possible playoff season. Of course, Cliff Stoudt & the Steelers broke my heart (hated the Squealers back then too) and the rest of the season went into the tank.

Whenever I start getting pissed off that the Ravens are struggling at 9-5, I take a timeout, and remember how hopeless the Colts were in my youth. We should all thank our lucky stars that #1 WE AMAZINGLY HAVE A TEAM which is miracle, and #2 THEY WIN A LOT. It just really pisses me off when Ravens fans get so angry when everything doesnt go to their likening during a game, even when the team F----ING WINS THE GAME. Sure the Ravens have a lot of issues, but for Christ Sake, enjoy it a little that we have a Baltimore football team, and they win a lot.

Oliver Luck was Houston's QB in the final game for the Colts in Baltimore. Weird.

Re: Anyone remember the 1977 season?

I was at the last game yelling IRSAY SUCKS, IRSAY SUCKS. It was like an old Orioles game in the 60s with only a few thousand in the stadium-lol. Everyone knew the team was moving at the end of the season and it did.

I felt like killing John Elway Sunday. They kept showing his face at the end standing on the side lines. How dare he come back here. He started the beginning of the end.

The Colts had the rights to him as the worse team in the draft but he refused to come here because his dad hated the coach - Frank Kush.

Seems Kush cheated him out of some wins or stole some recruits from Jack Elway or something but Jack hated Kush. He swore John wouldn't play for him and he didn't.

So Elway used baseball as a leverage. He was a slap hitter at best with a strong arm in the out field. The Yankees hurt us once again by offering him a contract to their minor leagues. There was no way in hell he was going to play in the bushes.

Ernie Accorsi our GM who later gave Parcells all that talent including Lawrence Taylor for their SBs swore Elway was going to sign but Irsay traded him for a stupid OG name Hinton I think.

Irsay traded one of the greatest QBs in history for a guard and said at least I got that surfer boy 500 miles from the beach.

Elway instantly signed and almost beat us as a rookie. Steadman wrote, you can just tell there's something special about John Elway. He'll be a great one.

We almost had Unitas, Bert and Elway.

Elway would have put a lot of fans in the seats and maybe, just maybe they would have stayed but I doubt it.

Irsay took so much heat from the local media for blowing the deal especially from Steadman and Phil Jackman two of the greatest sports writers to pick up a type writer. Irsay even blamed them for his departure and when Steadman was covering the first Colts game in Indy Irsay saw him and ran over and said how does if feel now. HuH? You lost your team.

The rest of the press room was shocked at such behavior but John just laughed.

But I hate seeing Elway's face on TV especially in our stadium, so much so I almost kicked
my flat screen in half.

Re: Anyone remember the 1977 season?

Speaking of that phony FG in GB, Baltimore complained about it so much the NFL raised the goal posts the following year and called it the Baltimore Extension.

That was an inside joke in re to all the bitching we did about the FG. They're still the same height today.

Shula beleived the game was fixed and NFL didn't want a backup RB as the premier QB in its showcase game.

So Colts went to Miami to play in the PO Bowl vs Dallas. Shula shocked the team during the week and said he was going to let Matte open it up. Everyone was shocked.

Before the game Shula watched Matte's warmups standing next to Tex Schram who kept laughing at all his high misses. Matte over-threw everything in practice just like Dilfer did before SB 35.

But in the end Matte beat Dallas by 30 points and tore apart Landry's famous flex defense.

Shula laughed on the plane ride home saying Matte didn't even know what a flex defense was.

The press and NFL were pissed at Shula for running up the score but he didn't give a damn.

He had a point to prove.

He would have won that Championship game with a backup RB to Lenny Moore as the premeir QB.

I remember that 65 game like it was yesterday and am still pissed over it to this day! What a lot of people might have forgotten was that Green Bay shouldn't have even been close enough to kick a FG to tie the game. When the Packers were driving Billy Ray Smith sacked the QB with a straight arm across his neck (legal then, illegal today) which would have kept them out of FG range. The refs threw a penalty flag and the call was "Grabbing the Face Mask" on Smith (he never came close to touching the QB's face mask). The Pack got a automatic 1st down and kicked the FG. I think that game was fixed big time and I think those Refs were a big part of it. The spread on the game was some insane point amount (15? 20? 25? Whatever?).

ABC had a prime time documentary special on the game months afterward which was unheard of for its time (no ESPN back then) questioning the FG (but not mentioning the penalty on Billy Ray Smith).

Pete Roselle hated Rossie for years and had no love lost for the Colts so it wasn't surprising that the NFL quietly raised the goal posts but didn't really make any mention why (although everyone knew why)!